New York Needs to Grieve Before We Can “Get Back to Being Fun”

Photo by Ben Goodwin

New York, I love you and I’m so sorry for your loss.

For our loss.

Twenty-two years ago we lost close to three thousand lives in a single morning. It was tangible violence although incomprehensible. The morning shook the world and turned the city on its side.

But now, looking back over the last three years, this destruction is harder to embrace. For some, I suspect it doesn’t feel real; most of us haven’t kept the sheer number of deaths in our heads the same way that we did on that day in September.

Between March of 2020 and May 9th 2023, we’ve lost 45,181 souls to Covid-19.

It’s a number so large it’s practically meaningless even if many of those deaths have touched us dearly. If grief leaves scars, most of us are so covered in them we can’t feel anything.

The loss is visible in smaller concrete ways that we don’t instantly connect to death. But when the bars close at 1am instead of 4, there’s a reason for it. When stores are understaffed and Sunday mornings a little bit less busy, it’s because there’s a slice of the city that was taken from us.

Back at the turn of the century, it was easier to misdirect our anger at another place and other people. Even folks who knew better often leaned into the wrong idea that retaliation (how do you get revenge when your tormenters are already dead?) would heal us.

It was better than nothing, we argued.

After all, something had to be done, so we shut our eyes, tried not to listen to those speaking wisdom and truth, and dove into a war that was as meaningless as the event that sparked it.

But this is something different.

If we call it an act of God, do we get to scream at the heavens and curse the almighty? Some easily blame others (China specifically), their racism primed and ready, just waiting for a spark. But for most of us, the storm was too violent and too continuous and ephemeral for us to aim our anger in any one direction with confidence.

Someone should have done something! There are long lists of people who failed us and who we believe might have fixed things before they got as bad as they have. Wether that belief is sincere or true is a matter of debate.

So instead, we’re living with anger and grief and no place to put them. Our neighborhoods have been scalded and torn open, and there hasn’t been a single large-scale effort to address the sadness we’ve all experienced and many still are. And when anger and sorrow swell up without a valve to open and relieve the pressure, we create another crisis that takes many more years to start to heal.

I don’t suspect our mayor will take the lead in letting us mourn. His fingers are in his ears and his motto is onwards and upwards and let’s all “just have fun again.”

How inspiring.

It’s impossible to move past a thing without acknowledging it in the first place. And it’s impossible to grieve without ritual. Wether it’s a personal matter or a large scale ceremony may be a matter of preference, but it’s a necessary step if healing is going to happen.

We’ve lost nearly fifty-thousand friends, neighbors, and family members in the past three years.

And the only way forward is to pause, hold them in our hearts, and make space to feel their loss deep in our bones.

New York, we need to grieve.

We need to acknowledge, and we need to accept that we suffered uncountable losses in ways we can’t begin to understand.

I can imagine a dozen scenarios from large-scale inter-borough remembrances to neighborhood ceremonies that keep it closer to home. But no matter the scope or scale, we need to do it. We need to come together and acknowledge the loss we’ve suffered and recognize the tremendous amount of resilience it’s taken all of us to be here now.

It might feel easier to forget. It may be easier to move on without addressing the hurt.

At least for now.

But these feelings and emotions don’t leave because we ignore them. They might hide for a while, but in that darkness they tend to transform into something far more sinister than grief.

We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to the ones we’ve lost to take our fingers from our ears, soften our hearts to the pain we hold, and to accept that we’ve suffered an insurmountable loss.

And then, perhaps if we do it together, we can more forward with purpose but also with compassion.

Only then can healing come.

And only then can we be whole.